Mammoth at the Ocean, Tuesday

(August 11)

So many birds. So not enough time and energy...or time to write!

On Tuesday--our first day--I got up at seven or so, about the time when the sun started showing over the sand dunes to the northeast. The Colorado River goes almost due north, so the ocean is to the South, but we're facing west so it feels all wackydoodle. I guess that's because on my mental map the Colorado flows west to east, which would make our campsite face south. But it doesn't.

So we took the dogs on a little stroll and then I made breakfast. Then we tried to take the car down the road toward the nearby beach area (not on the ocean, on the river), and immediately got stuck in the sand. Luckily Ed was able to push my little Mazda 3 out.

After that we stayed sensibly on the pavement. Over at the beach parking area--on the pavement--it was still an awful long way to the beach, or so it seemed at the speed of Zack. A few days later I went without Zack, and it was still a long way.

There were many of these little birds, which by behavior are surely Sanderlings. The day before on my walk with dogs, I was amost completely sure I was seeing Ruddy Turnstones--"the bird that looks like a calico cat."  But these were different, and Sanderlings obsessively chase the waves' edge just like these did.

 

 

 So, Sanderling.

We puttered around on the beach for a while, then went back. Ed considered fishing but finally suggested that we go driving out to investigate some of the nature places I'd wanted to see. It was really too late in the day for that--everything was over an hour away and I didn't just want to "see" them, I wanted to stop the car and walk all the little boardwalks and hang out at the bird blinds.

So we compromised on going to Quintana Beach to check out the campsites there. I'd heard it was a pretty good place to RV camp. The drive was boring, on narrow but very straight little roads that cut through farmland. Not boring in a bad way, but not like the scenic drive I was expecting.

Quintana Beach is, of course, not all that near the beach. The walk to the beach was about the same as that at our campground...maybe a quarter mile? Google maps shows 500-1000'.  Through soft sand, of course. The park was pretty clean and the buildings were kept up, but there was little vegetation and no trees to speak of, and there would be nothing to look at except your neighbor campers. So our conclusion was, almost certainly not.

As we were coming back down the road to our home base, I noticed something off to the left perched at the top of a few scrubby trees--Crested Caracara. Molly and I returned to take a closer look at them, but we couldn't get any closer than this:

The side of the road they were on had a long, narrow canal blocking me from walking over. When I tried going into a convenient "ice house" parking lot and then cutting across country on a little dirt road, I soon came to a barbed wire fence in very good repair.  I could have gotten through but it would have been a real pain in the neck. Not to mention my jeans, teeshirt, and skin.

 

 

So Molly and I went back to camp, hung around and ate supper, watching boats go up and down the channel. And birds, of course.              Killdeer->